


No Sound But The Wind

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes's Notebooks, M/M, Memory Loss, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-08 00:16:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8822035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: Bucky Barnes struggles to remember.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a Bucky/Steve number, although it's mainly just Bucky. I hope you like it and I'll continue to try and catch up with all the advent fics so bear with me.
> 
> Thanks for reading :)

There was too much information.

The Asset had never normally needed to have this much input crammed into his head. There was usually just the mission, the target, the rendezvous and then the debrief after.

That was it. That was all he needed to know to be efficient.

But now there was all sorts of extra information assaulting his brain.

Names. Faces. Smells. Feelings. Places.

Things that he knew were facts. Things that he thought were dreams.

Things that he hoped were just nightmares.

And there were voices too.

Sometimes they were just words he heard in other people’s voices. Like he had just caught part of a conversation in the wind from afar. Sometimes he heard people talking to him as if they were standing right next to him, but when he turned around there was no-one there. Sometimes he was there too, his voice, having conversations with other voices. He knew that one of the voices was definitely his voice, even though it sounded different nearly every time. Every now and then it confused him and he couldn’t work out which voice was really him.

These were memories.

He worked it out after spending two nights huddled in the corner of an abandoned factory, thinking that he was going insane.

Memories were important, he realised.

The museum was helpful. It had told him who he was in the past, it had told him the name of the man on the bridge who he had later fought on the helicarrier.

But the museum only told part of the story. It only told the side of things that everyone knew. He knew from experience that public knowledge wasn’t necessarily the whole story. Things could be hidden. Things could be secret.

The museum didn’t tell the parts of the story that the man on the – Captain America knew. It didn’t tell the parts of the story that _he_ knew, even if he wasn’t sure he knew anything at all.

It didn’t tell him that the man on the – Captai – Steve had loved him, but he was sure…he was almost sure… he thought… maybe. It didn’t tell him that he had feelings for Steve either.

He didn’t exactly know what those feelings were, but when he thought of them he felt… something other than cold.

That _had_ to mean something. He had been cold for so long, but then he had seen the man on the bridge clearly and the man had said, “Bucky!” and the man had begged him not to fight and said they were friends and helped him escape when the metal beam had pinned him to the floor and told him that he was with him “’til the end of the line.”

And the Asset had felt warmth, such blistering heat, course through every part of him, that told him that this man, Captain America, Steve, was important, that he had jumped into the river after him and dragged his body to the shore.

It _had_ to mean something. He _needed_ it to.

He didn’t remember ever needing anything before, but this was important, even if he didn’t know why.

The memories were betraying him though, catching him unawares and compromising him.

He had kept moving after the fall of Project Insight. The files that had been released onto the internet by the redhead – just looking at her sent sharp stabbing pains through his head – had compromised Hydra and the organisation was in chaos.

Initially he had returned to the bank vault where they kept the chair after pulling the Captain from the river, only to be ignored and left in the room with the chair while black-clad operatives and scientists raced around trying to destroy all evidence of their wrongdoings before the governments of the world got hold of them.

He could have told them that it was hopeless. It was all online and was now probably copied and saved a million times by now.

At one point a scientist, not looking where they were going, bumped into him. The double take and flinch they gave indicated that he had managed to enter the building and the main vault completely unnoticed, slipping in like the ghost he was meant to be.

There was a brief, hurried argument in the corner about what to do with him now that Hydra was exposed and his handler was dead. They had eventually agreed to put him back in the chair, wipe him and store him for the future again.

He blinked and then when his eyes focused again, they were all gone.

Dead, in various poses and positions.

And he needed to get out before they could take his thoughts away again.

He smashed up the chair and cryo tank before he left. He didn’t feel bad about it.

It made it clear from the start though, that he needed to avoid any and all Hydra forces in the future. It also made it clear that he needed to learn how to be a person without a handler pulling his strings anymore.

So he went to the museum and he followed the flying man, and the man from the bridge and the little redhead – she was younger then older, so he though he must have memories of her too – and learnt their habits.

He needed to remember that was all. Just needed to remember who Bucky Barnes was. Just needed to try to be Bucky again.

It was difficult, especially as Bucky Barnes was a whole, functioning person, whereas he was so trapped in flashes of sounds – memories – that he could barely move sometimes.

It was on a day when he had decided to venture back into society briefly again that the solution came to him.

He had recently pickpocketed some man, a rich type, politician maybe, yammering away into his cell phone and not paying attention and was attempting to order food in a diner. As he crossed to a table, he noticed a book there, lying askew on the seat as if it had fallen out of a pocket or bag.

Diary, the book said in big gold letters. A padlock held the pages of the book together.

‘Diary, noun,’ his brain told him. ‘A book containing pages marked in calender order in which to write appointments. Or a daily record, usually private, in which to record someone’s thoughts, feelings and memories.’

_And memories._

A diary or journal or notebook could be used to hold thoughts and memories. He needed somewhere to store the extra information so as to keep at peak operating level.

He could write it all down.

All the words, all the echoes, all the faces that floated in front of his eyes that he was sure no-one else could see.

He could write it all there. And then on the bad days, the moments when he couldn’t remember his own name or why he was alive, he could look at the memories and know that he was a real person with real thoughts and real memories that wouldn’t just fade away.

Stumbling out of the diner, he located a general store and used the money he was going to spend on coffee and pancakes to purchase a plain, black notebook and pen. He sat on a park bench and opened the book to the first, fresh, unspoiled white page. The pen in his hand shook.

In careful, large, shaky block letters he started writing.

_My name is James Buchanan Barnes._

_The man from the bridge is Steven Grant Rogers, aka Captain America._

_He is with me ‘til the end of the line._

_I want to remember more._


End file.
